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Japan Local Organization
There are some 258,000 police officers nationwide,
about 97
percent of whom were affiliated with local police forces.
Local
forces include forty-three prefectural (ken) police
forces;
one metropolitan (to) police force, in Tokyo; two
urban
prefectural (fu) police forces, in Osaka and
Kyoto; and one
district (d ) police force, in Hokkaido. These
forces have
limited authority to initiate police actions. Their most
important
activities are regulated by the National Police Agency,
which
provides funds for equipment, salaries, riot control,
escort, and
natural disaster duties, and for internal security and
multiple
jurisdiction cases. National police statutes and
regulations
establish the strength and rank allocations of all local
personnel
and the locations of local police stations. Prefectural
police
finance and control the patrol officer on the beat,
traffic
control, criminal investigations, and other daily
operations.
Each prefectural police headquarters contains
administrative
divisions corresponding to those of the bureaus of the
National
Police Agency. Headquarters are staffed by specialists in
basic
police functions and administration and are commanded by
an officer
appointed by the local office of the National Public
Safety
Commission. Most arrests and investigations are performed
by
prefectural police officials (and, in large jurisdictions,
by
police assigned to substations), who are assigned to one
or more
central locations within the prefecture. Experienced
officers are
organized into functional bureaus and handle all but the
most
ordinary problems in their fields.
Below these stations, police boxes
(koban)--substations
near major transportation hubs and shopping areas and in
residential districts--form the first line of police
response to
the public. About 20 percent of the total police force is
assigned
to koban. Staffed by three or more officers working
in
eight-hour shifts, they serve as a base for foot patrols
and
usually have both sleeping and eating facilities for
officers on
duty but not on watch. In rural areas, residential offices
usually
are staffed by one police officer who resides in adjacent
family
quarters. These officers endeavor to become a part of the
community, and their families often aid in performing
official
tasks.
Officers assigned to koban have intimate
knowledge of
their jurisdictions. One of their primary tasks is to
conduct
twice-yearly house-by-house residential surveys of homes
in their
areas, at which time the head of the household at each
address
fills out a residence information card detailing the
names, ages,
occupations, business addresses, and vehicle registration
numbers
of household occupants and the names of relatives living
elsewhere.
Police take special note of names of the aged or those
living alone
who might need special attention in an emergency. They
conduct
surveys of local businesses and record employee names and
addresses, in addition to such data as which
establishments stay
open late and which employees might be expected to work
late.
Participation in the survey is voluntary, and most
citizens
cooperate, but an increasing segment of the population has
come to
regard the surveys as invasions of privacy.
Information elicited through the surveys is not
centralized but
is stored in each police box, where it is used primarily
as an aid
to locating people. When a crime occurs or an
investigation is
under way, however, these files are invaluable in
establishing
background data for a case. Specialists from district
police
stations spend considerable time culling through the
usually poorly
filed data maintained in the police boxes.
Data as of January 1994
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